Thursday, July 12, 2012

Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition by Stuart Vyse

Believing in Magic by Stuart
Vyse is a book that, indepthly I might add, describes the sources of belief in
superstition and magic as well as some of the psychological principles and theories
that explain some of these interesting beliefs. In the book, Vyse describes
everything from a profile of the ideal superstitious person to the
developmental origins of our superstitions. He describes humans as
answer-seeking creatures that try to make order out of the chaos that is our
everyday lives. In trying to find the patterns and answers to life’s random
events, we develop superstitions to make sense of it all. For example, Vyse
describes belief in religion as a response to the uncertainty of life, death,
and the afterlife. He also says that superstition and superstitious rituals are
ways to for us to maintain the illusion of control that is, “a necessity to
life.” The book goes into detail with
several studies that have been performed by notable psychologists, like Jean
Piaget and B.F Skinner, which have studied superstitious behavior in both
humans and animals and its possible origins.

My
favorite part of the book was actually in the epilogue at the end of the book.
The author describes a situation he was in when he was asking people of their
superstitions and beliefs for research for his book. When he was finished, the
people asked him, “do you have any superstitions or weird beliefs?” The author
talks about how uncomfortable he felt in this situation because he in fact does
not have any superstitious beliefs. This, to me, shows how widespread
superstitious beliefs and rituals go; that the person who doesn’t have a crazy
superstition feels like the odd man out in a social situation. Overall, I think
this entire course has been about our superstitious beliefs as a culture.
Throughout history, these beliefs have been passed down from generation to
generation and even the people who “don’t believe” will still perform
ritualistic acts, “just to be on the safe side.” Superstitions are a large part
of our society, and the majority of people you question will have at least one
strange thing they believe; whether that thing is God, a lucky rabbit’s foot,
or a lucky hat. People have faith in things because they want to take comfort
in the fact that they have a say in what happens in their day, and that
everything isn’t just a random event. Those most affected by superstition were
college students, athletes, and gamblers. College students will turn to any
form of help they can receive when preparing for a big final or giving a major
presentation. Baseball players are notorious for being superstitious before
heading onto the field. Vyse highlights the five hour long ritual of Wade
Boggs, formerly of the Boston Red Sox. A brief description of Bogg’s ritual,
along with some other ML B players, can be found here: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/28290

Gamblers
are also highly affected by
superstitious beliefs and rituals, believing that machines can be hot and cold,
and perform unique rituals before tossing dice in a crap game. It does not seem
to matter how ridiculous these beliefs may be (like the Q-Ray’s ability to cure
arthritis but balancing ions or Nostradamus’s wild predictions) because in the
end all people are looking for is an answer to the uncertain; and that, I feel,
was the main theme of this book. In this class, we have talked about the Seek and Ye Shall Find problem, where people sort of see what they want to see. Superstitions play into this problem because often times, when two random events happen in close sequence to each other, as humans we think that whatever we were doing cause those events to happen. This is the reason many superstitions and rituals arise, because we have felt that we controlled the sequence of events by performing a ritual in between them happening. Once again, it is that sense of control that we feel is necessary that causes superstitions. Humans are always going to have an innate sense of wanting to control their environment and rejecting the fact that life is a series of random events. As long as this is, superstitions and rituals are never going to go away.

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Pseudoscience and the Paranormal

The popular media and self-help industry is rife with extraordinary claims. Alien experimentation, psychic detectives, mediums, ESP, extreme therapies and miracle products are all examples of how pseudoscience and the paranormal have become prevalent, popular and even an extremely lucrative enterprise. The majority of these examples defy the basic laws of science, logic and common sense yet they appeal to a large number of people. Here we will use science, specifically a psychological perspective to explore these popular theories and claims, and learn to think critically in order to be able to constructively evaluate them.